The fact that they aren’t going to change it doesn’t make me happy with it.
Can’t please everyone. Guess you are stuck going back and making it the way you like yourself.
Actually, I’m stuck playing HL1, which I don’t mind. 
Who was in charge of designing this level?
Johnathan Welsh ( Cpl.1nsane ) I think.
Lack of atmosphere is one of BMs flaws. Thanks for pointing out one of reasons why this atmosphere was lacking.
This is what I wrote in my early review:
So, in other words, levels weren`t organized in chronological order gameplay wise, by correctly introducing new weapons and giving environment to try out and experiment with those weapons, which players would normallly want to do after picking up a weapon for the first time.
So, in that sense, we picked up magnum instead of shotgun, but after leaving area bunch of Vortigaunts spawned and mangnums slow fire rate and inablility to drop them with a single shot unless its a headshot made a bad first impression for this newly picked up gun. It wasnt an appropiate situation to use this weapon and, honestly, magnum isnt even suited against xen creatures, but against hecus, which is why it originally was indroduced when we were leaving blast pit. Shotgun itself was introduced right before running into literally horde of Houndeyes, whose numbers were too much to handle if youre not already familiar with this gun and if you werent already expecting such a big pack of enemies there. Could analyze all other guns as well, but I dont remember that much and I don`t really have time to write all this neither.
p.s. and yeah, it isnt just about weapons, but can be refered to other things as well. For example, as I mentioned meeting this horde of houndeyes after picking up shotgun, which was completely unexcepted and didnt follow any flow.
Never thought of that, but you make an excellent point! I played HL: Source just before playing BM, so I was wondering why we got the shotgun so late. The only “worthy” Xen creature to use the magnum on is Vortigaunts, to be fair, because you want to kill them quickly as possible in my opinion since they charge so damn quickly now.
I did notice that though. I could easily quit the game and not go “oh maybe 30 minutes more”. It was just a “do or dont”, easy decision. Original HL had this weird hold on me, like it was urging me to keep going, to reach victory.
I also found the HECU fights made me want to quit. If I could tell what was coming, or I had retried a particular area too much, I was more inclined to quit than persist and succeed just because the HECU personally feel harder.